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"Dickie Darkie across the road" is how my dad likes to refer to the black gentleman who's moved in across the road.

My favourite accidental racism is my mum being easily confused and so thinking Coloured is the accepted term, and Black the evil racist one.

The Grevilles..Greville Starkey...Darkie.

I came from a working class family in an area that has had a massive intake of immigrants over the years. They were hugely racist growing up and of course that rubs off when you are young and impressionable. It

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I hear that, Wretch! The part of Coventry I grew up in is known as County Coundon as its where all us Micks moved to. My first wife had family from the north and were Protestant, her great uncle even being head of some orange order there. So when my school friend returned from Uni shortly after I got engaged, the first words his mum greeted him with were "Keith Houchen is marrying an Orange girl from Belfast". At first he thought she had a fake tan, or drank too much Sunny Delight, but then he twigged.

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My work is pretty terrible for it, I wish I could say it was just the older members of staff but there's a nasty undercurrent of casual racism with the majority of the staff that live locally. Even after being here a couple of years still shocks me sometimes, especially seeing as we're in pharmaceuticals & lots of our suppliers are Asian.

My co-workers know I'll just shut off or disengage from conversation when they start as I'm 'really politically correct'. I think this is the description for anyone who uses the term 'Asian' as opposed to 'Dirty Paki'.

2009 estimates state 95.9% of Barrow's population as White British, and ethnic minority populations in Barrow stood at 4.1%. Other ethnic groups in Barrow include Other White 1.9%, South Asian 0.8%, Mixed Race 0.7%, Black 0.3%, Chinese 0.2% and all other ethnic groups represented 0.2% of the population.

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I've never heard my mum saying anything bigoted that I can recall. My grandad abhors racism and xenophobia but he does have the old stereotypical view that homosexual men are effeminate pansies. I think it's also worth factoring in that my mum is white and my dad was Mauritian, so if my grandparents did have any underlying racist views they probably would have made a point of not airing them in front of me or my parents. The only thing I can recall my nan saying that raised an eyebrow was when she was updating my mum on what happened to one of her old school friends and dropped in "she moved to London, got a job as a teacher, married a Jew..." and then paused to see if there'd be any reaction to that bombshell before moving on with the story.

My great grandmother was a different kettle of fish entirely. She lived to 98 years old and she was the personification of that "product of her generation" get out clause. She was extremely grumpy and angry at the world on top of that, but even when she was being nice she used some pretty outrageous language. In the last few years of her life she had community nurses visiting her at home to bring her meals and the like. Her favourite nurse was Jamaican and she grumbled incessantly if one of the other nurses came instead, but she still called her Jamaican carer "the nigger nurse".

Also there was a time when CBBC was on the living room TV and Angelica Bell was presenting and my Great Grandmother sang the charming little ditty: "Lips don't get bigger than a thick lipped nigger's " and then sort of nudged me in the ribs like I was supposed to laugh at it. Awkward.

On the plus side, at Christmas she would usually manage to offend someone in utterly hilarious fashion by providing a blisteringly frank critique of one of their gifts. That was actually what I missed the most after she died. If I live to 98 you'd better believe I'll be an utter bastard to everyone. I think it's expected of you by that point and is the only real pleasure you have left in life.

Oh, and my great uncle hated all bloody foreigners with the exception of Mr. Li next door, whose family he joined for dinner every Friday for 20 years.

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Despite being the most liberal people on the planet, my parents have some odd attitudes to gays. I remember my mum saying she wouldn't mind what sort of girl I brought home "as long as it's a girl".

And in the recent gay marriage debate they unexpectedly were against it, and got quite upset about the whole thing. I really do put it down to a generational thing, as they have had a number of gay friends over the years, even back in the 60s when it was quite a frowned upon thing.

As someone who married a Gupta, I've been surprised and delighted that it's never been an issue with anyone we've met. The only comment I got was from one of my mates (who's black) who commented "I bet she has a really pink pussy", which I'd never encountered as a racial stereotype before.

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My family aren't too bad for racism beyond the whole 'you can't call people that anymore', which regularly gets trotted out when a grandparent is around, but my parents do react rather negatively if a gay couple - particularly on TV - happen to have any physical contact whatsoever.

Hand holding, arms round, hugging, god-forbid-KISSING will all receive an "eurgh" of disgust, which, when responded to by me, will earn an "I've got nothing against gay people, but we don't have to see it!" I'd like to think it's just an aversion to public displays of affection, but it's probably not...